I have been telling myself, and tell you all of you at times, that this is it! Climb on board the skinny train! I’ve been slacking, but now I’m doing it! Yessiree bob, this is me, not slacking!

And then I haven’t done anything. And in addition to not doing anything, I’ve put things in front of me that are not even REMOTELY good.

I have really been feeling cruddy about myself. It is as if every shred of will power has disappeared.

Imagine a pool of bad eating behavior. Not only have I NOT walked away from the pool, I have just been swimming around in the pool occasionally calling out, “OK, I’M GETTING OUT NOW!” “Really! I am!” “Tomorrow’s the day, I’ll get out, I promise!” “Just five more minutes, ma!” “Ooooohhh look i’m all pruney like David Blaine!” “Hey, this pool makes me feel like shit all the time, and yet the ladder to climb out is soooooo faaaaaaar awaaaaay maybe next week.”

And I have really been wrestling with myself on HOW I wrangle up the motivation to get out of that fucking pool. I have to DO IT, and I just HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO.

This week was the big week. I was going to set my alarm early and get up and exercise before getting ready for the day. I was going to make excellent choices, quit drinking so much damn caffeine and no water and subsist on lean protein and fibrous fruit and vegetables and whole grain starches.

The alarm went off Monday morning, and I could have gotten up, I wasn’t soooo tired, but I didn’t. I stopped at 7-11 on the way to pick up my PKR and got a diet coke and a muffin. The kind with sugary sprinkly things on top. This is me for months, feeling like shit about my choices, so I manage to kind of shove the actual choice way down deep inside, and the crappy feelings along with it, but it makes it easier to make that same choice again. And again. And again.

So yesterday, I opened up my weight watcher’s online point tracker thingamabob, entered in my breakfast, my sugary muffin, called up the Pad Thai that I desperately wanted to order for lunch, and sat staring at the fact that 1 cup is 9 points. Does the restaurant serve only 1 cup? Fat chance, 2 and a half, at LEAST. So we’re talking likely, 18-13 points in that take out container.

I stared and stared and I thought about the times in the past when doing this was “easy”. I KNOW it wasn’t actually easy. But the motivation and the will power to JUST DO IT ALREADY was actually there, as opposed to now, when it seems like this impossibility. I got to thinking about why it was a possibility, and I think it was the end goal that did it. This seems like such an easy thing, but it totally was it.

So I looked really hard at those times when it was “easy.”

When I got pregnant with Ethan, I weighed about 295 lbs. Look, I used a real number. Scary, huh? Well I AM scared, and it’s time to get serious, so there you go.

I gained about 40 lbs during his pregnancy, but about 6-8 weeks post partum, I was back down to 295. I wanted to have a V-BAC with Jocelyn (vaginal birth after caesarian), and was told that the only way I’d even have a chance, was if I didn’t gain any weight. Ethan was a 9 lb baby, and the story goes that second babies are usually even bigger. I did NOT WANT a caesarian. That was my goal. I was about the same weight when I got pregnant with Jocelyn, and that goal did it – it gave me the power to act. I only gained about 5 pounds during the entire pregnancy – which meant that my body was actually losing weight, while the baby and reproductive bits were all gaining the appropriate weight. 6 weeks after she was born, I was down 20 pounds to 280 – I had lost it while I was pregnant. That success gave me enough drive to keep at it, and I lost another 30 lbs. I was nursing her the entire time and so was allowed to eat an obscene amount of food to fuel the milk production boob factory, and I also was cutting all milk protein out of my diet, as she had a pretty strong intolerance for it. When you’re eating a TON and can’t have ice cream anyway because your baby will be miss fussypants, it makes it fairly easy – but that’s not to say that it wasn’t hard work and I needed to stay motivated.

When she was about 5 months old, some gall stones decided to lodge themselves in my liver and I developed pancreatitis and spent a week in the hospital. I pumped for that week, but when I came home, nursing didn’t last too much longer. The truth was, I was sick of limiting my diet so much, it drove me crazy, so the breastfeeding came to an end.

With the new liberties allowed in what I ate, project skinny fell by the wayside and my attempts to pick it back up have been pretty lackluster. Before I spent a week in the hospital, I weighed 246. That will be 2 years ago, this fall. As my weight climbed over the past 1 1/2 years, I kept trying and trying to get back with it, but haven’t really had the focus and the goals to keep me on target. The immediate gratification always won out over the long term ideology. Last week, I crossed out of the 250’s and the scale read 260.5 and I knew that this is it. It is time to focus and figure out HOW to get the motivation I need, because this has GOT TO HAPPEN.

I used real numbers. They probably shocked folks, but hey, anyone that looks at me could probably guess. Just because I don’t SAY how much I weigh doesn’t mean I don’t actually weigh it. This is it. I’m serious about this. Thus, full disclosure.

Yesterday I stared at the 9 pts for a cup of Pad Thai and got off my ass and went to Subway instead. I got a foot long so I wouldn’t feel deprived (I was stuffed), but even that is still an excellent choice (especially compared to Pad Thai). Did I have a perfect day? I don’t think stopping at Taco Bell on the way home would qualify as “perfect” but I entered EVERY thing I ate into my points tracker (including the chocolate chip cookie I had last night) and this morning brought a baggie of sugar snap peas to work to munch on. Still got a big diet coke this morning, but I’ve also drunk 2 bottles of water to go with it (and I really need to finish this up cause I need to pee something awful.)

This is it. What is going to keep me focused? I know that thoughts of “I don’t want to be like THAT again” won’t last, because I think them all the time. This time, no more “free” Saturdays. I’m going to track all the time, EVERYthing.

And the thing I’m going to focus on when I want to toss it all, our vacation in August. We are still trying to determine what we’re goign to do, but whereever we go, I want to look better than I do right now. I want to have more energy, and feel good about myself, and I know I can make a difference by then. If I take one little step every day, then in August, it will have amounted to something, and by this time next year, I may have gotten a long way towards a healthier me.

Specific goal time – I’ll go with the standard WW first goal, which is 10%. I’m just going to focus on these first 26 pounds.

And maybe tomorrow I can actually struggle out of bed when the alarm goes off to try some exercise. But if not, at least I know I still am out of that pool.